By BOB McMANUS

November 6, 2002 -- WHO was New York's big winner yesterday?

Among the Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That is, look for New York's junior senator to make a move to take custody of her party - and of her future.

Can she do it?

History's on her side.

Twelve years ago, New York Republicans had just absorbed a most humiliating loss; its gubernatorial candidate, Pierre Rinfret, had won a scant 22 percent of the vote!

Fast forward to 1994, when Republicans - George Pataki and Dennis Vacco - won the top two spots on the ballot.

And a Republican, Rudy Giuliani, was mayor of New York.

These victories and others were the product of a collaboration of New York's then-junior senator, Alfonse D'Amato, and a political street fighter from upstate, William Powers.

It didn't end there.

The drubbing Pataki administered to gubernatorial candidate Peter Vallone four years ago was followed by the Michael Bloomberg mayoralty - itself made possible partly by the embarrassing inability of city Democrats to navigate New York's racial shoals.

Indeed, last year's bitter, and morally diminishing, mayoral primaries made it impossible for the party this year to field its strongest gubernatorial candidate, retrospectively speaking: Andrew Cuomo. He is white, and Carl McCall is black, and that was going to be that.

No doubt the GOP withers when Pataki takes his leave, just as the Democratic Party dried up when Mario Cuomo was expelled from Albany.

With Powers and D'Amato long since on the sidelines, and with the party now dedicated solely to advancing Pataki's interests, the abyss beckons.

That is, the Democrats' opportunities are clear.

Will they take them?

First, somebody's got to take charge.

Like Hillary Clinton?

Why not?

She has the necessaries.

That is, she works hard; she's focused; she has unlimited access to mounds of out-of-state cash; she has vision, and she's ambitious - in that dangerous-to-be-around sort of way.

Sort of like Alfonse D'Amato, circa 1990.

D'Amato, of course, was content with his lot here in New York.

Clinton, by most accounts, seems to have set her ultimate sights beyond New York - not necessarily a disadvantage, even if the rest of the nation seems to care little about New Yorkers these days.

And there are remarkably few institutional impediments to a Clinton ascendancy here.

Chuck Schumer, the senior senator, seems content with his lot.

So, too, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, unambiguously the most powerful Democrat in New York. (The New York Law Journal reports he has a new part-time job - with Weitz & Luxenberg PC, trial lawyers so rich they chase ambulances in Ferraris.)

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, newly re-elected this morning, is now running for governor himself - not a goal in conflict with anything on the Clinton agenda.

True, race continues to bedevil Democrats (even if rank-and-file black party members couldn't bestir themselves for McCall).

Could a white woman reasonably expect to take control of a political party now headed by a respected black man, Assemblyman Denny Farrell?

Well, this white woman was invited into New York politics by the legendary Rep. Charles Rangel of Harlem.

So the answer is yes.

Will she try?

She's Hillary Clinton.

What do you think?

-- Anonymous, November 06, 2002